Hicks didn't tell us about abuse: Downer

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Australian officials met Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks on
several occasions and at no time did he raise allegations he had
been sexually abused, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says.

Mr Downer said a claim the Australian had been abused while in
US custody would be investigated but needed to be tested before he
took it too seriously.

"Our officials have had many meetings with him ... and on no
occasion has he ever raised such a concern," he told ABC Radio
today.

"[A] consul was down there fairly recently in Guantanamo Bay and
David Hicks has never made such claims to Australian officials.

"Look, we've had claims that he was tortured. We've had two
American teams investigate those claims and they have come back
with nil returns."

On ABC TV's Four Corners program last night, Hicks's
father, Terry, said Hicks was sexually abused during two 10-hour
beatings by attackers aboard a US warship.

Hicks has been in US custody since he was captured alongside
Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001 and has spent most of
that time since at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

A former Guantanamo Bay detainee Martin Munbanga told Four
Corners that Hicks revealed to him how he had been
blindfolded, beaten, spat upon, sexually abused and assaulted.

Shadow Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the allegations raised
on the program should be investigated.

"Whenever an allegation as serious as this has been made, we
have to be worried whether this is true and we have to be worried
about the sorts of controls that are in place," she told ABC
Radio.

"I mean, how does this stack up with what the Government has
told us up until now?"

Law Council of Australia president John North said the
allegations raised could not easily be dismissed.

"All of his claims would need to be tested very carefully indeed
because why otherwise has he been held for nearly four years
without a proper court process? There must be something people are
trying to hide," Mr North said.